
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



A TRIBUTE 

Delivered, February 14, 1909, upon the Occasion 
OF A Special Memorial Service, 



BY 



Rev. JAMES W. LEE, D.D. 

Pastor, Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church South, 
Atlanta, Ga. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



A TRIBUTE 

Delivered, February 14, 1909, upon the Occasion 
OF A Special Memorial Service, 



BY 



Rev. JAMES W. LEE, D.D. 

Pastor, Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church South, 
Atlanta, Ga. 



/ . 



INTRODUCTORY. 



To celebrate the centenary of the birth of Abraham 
Lincoln, a special memorial service was held in Trinity 
Methodist Episcopal Church, Atlanta, Ga., on the even- 
ing of Sunday, February 14, 1909. 

This same City of Atlanta — the scene of this unique 
service — had been reduced to ashes just forty-five years 
ago by a division of the Federal Army which looked 
to Lincoln as its Commander-in-Chief. 

The Memorial Service was presided over by an offi- 
cer of the Grand AiTny of the Republic, while seated 
upon the platform and also uniting in the service 
was the Commander-in-Chief of the United Confed- 
erate Veterans. 



A newspaper account of this service was sent to Hon. 
Robert T. Lincoln, who wrote in acknowledgment as 

follows : 

"Chicago, 111., Feb. 20, 1909. 
" 60 Lake Shore Drive. 
'• My Dear Sir : 

" I thank you very heartily for your kindness in send- 
ing me the report of the memorial service in Trinity 
Church upon the anniversary of my father's birth. None 
of the occurrences of last week have affected me so much 



as this meeting, as an indication of the realization of 
the hopes which I think guided every act of his while 
President. It is dramatic that this proof should come 
from a city destroyed by one of the armies under his 
supreme command and be presented by Confederate 
soldiers, listening with approval to an address of such 
eloquence and patriotic feeling as yours. As his son, I 
am very grateful for the meeting and more than grate- 
ful for your distinguished part in it. 

" As General Scully spoke of the Gettysburg address 
and of the circumstances under which he thought it was 
written, I think you will be interested in knowing the 
facts about it, as related by my father's Secretary, Mr. 
Nicolay, and I am therefore sending to you a re-print of 
an article written by Mr. Nicolay in 1894. From it you 
will see that my father probably wrote a short address 
before the beginning of the journey and only changed it 
slightly just before its delivery. I think it improbable 
that he could have secured a minute to himself in his 
car filled with people even to reflect as to his words for 
the next day. Renewing to you the assurances of my 

grateful feelings, 

"I am 

" Very sincerely yours, 

(Signed) "Robert T. Lincoln." 

The Rev. James W. Lee, D.D., 
Atlanta, Ga. 



PROGRAM. 



Service in Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 
Sunday Evening, February 14, 1909. 



D. I. Carson, chaplain of O. M. Mitchel Post No. 1, 
Grand Army of the RepubHc, presiding. 

Organ prelude. 

Music — Choir of Trinity Church. 

Reading the Scripture — Rev. A. F. Sherrill, D.D., 
dean of Atlanta Theological Seminary. 

Prayer — General Clement A. Evans, commander-in- 
chief United Confederate Veterans. 

Reading — Mr. Lincoln's Favorite Poem, "O, Why 
Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud ?"— Colonel T. H. 
Jones, camp A, Wheeler's cavalry. 

Reading — Mr. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Brig- 
adier General A. J, Scully, United States Army, retired. 

Address— Rev. J. W. Lee, D.D. 

Hymn, "My Country 'Tis of Thee" — Congregation. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

Address by Rev. James W. Lee, D.D., Pastor of Trinity 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 



*' All things work together for good to them who love God, to them 
who are called according to His purpose." — Romans xiii., 28. 

Lv his essay on German literature, Thomas Carlyle 
declares that "there is a divine idea pervading the vis- 
ible universe; which visible universe is indeed but its 
symbol and sensible manifestation, having in itself no 
meaning or even true existence independent of it. To 
the mass of men this divine idea lies hidden; yet to 
discern it and seize it and live wholly in it is the con- 
dition of all genuine virtue, knowledge, freedom and 
the end, therefore, of all spiritual effort in every age." 

This is the interpretation given by a master in litera- 
ture of the words of the text. The machinery of the 
universe works for good to all those who discern and 
seize and wholly live in the divine idea at its heart. 
Here we have a principle by which to account for 
the continuous activity and influence of every great 
man in history. The universal order publishes larger 
and larger editions of the men who discern and seize 
and wholly live in the divine idea history is gradually 
unfolding. Because of this, newly-bound copies of 
Abraham and Moses and Isaiah and St. Paul are issued 
by the wheel work of the centuries for the readers of 
every passing age. Those who are the called accord- 
ing to His purpose are such as yield to the pressure of 
the eternal intention of the Almighty and expend their 
spiritual efforts in the direction it urges. 



8 



I. 

The contemporaries of a distinguished man can 
not know the place he is to take in history. They are 
too close to him to see all there is of him if he be really 
great, and too near to quite measure his diminutiveness 
if his prominence be due to the accidents of external 
estate or official position, A time exposure of nearly 
eight centuries was required for Sabatier to get the 
picture he took of St. Francis and pubhshed in his "Life 
of St. Francis of Assisi." 

The clods that fall upon their graves close the careers 
of the rank and file of men. It is only now and then 
that one of our race appears on the planet with wealth 
of being stored in his soul too great to be locked inside 
a tomb, who lives again, not only in eternity, but through- 
out all time: 

"In minds made better by their presence, live 
In pulses stirred to generosity, 
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
Of miserable aims that end with self, 
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night-like stars, 
And with their mild persistence urge man's search 
To vaster issues." 

Such a man was Abraham Lincoln. 

IL 

His mortal remains were consigned to their last 
resting place forty-four years ago, but the further away 
we get from the day of his funeral and from the few feet 
of ground enriched by his sleeping dust, the more clearly 
is it understood that there was little of Lincoln John 
Wilkes Booth was able to kill, and a very small part of 
him his loved ones were able to bury. 



Lincoln belonged to that class of men who learn in 
consecrated service the secret of the resurrection, and 
who discover and practice the method of finding them- 
selves for this world and the next, by losing themselves 
before they cease to breathe. Lincoln did not wait 
for the judgment trump of the last day to call him 
from the dead. While alive in the flesh, he conformed 
to eternal principles and by them was transformed 
into an incorruptible citizen of all the ages. 

IIL 

Not by any process of anal3'sis can one deter- 
mine the particular gift, or power, or accomplishment, 
it was in Lincoln that won for him the favor of the years. 
It is well known that time can neither be flattered nor 
bribed. Not without good reason are favors shown 
this mortal or that by the tearless order of the flying 
suns. When the centuries are found conspiring to 
augment the worth and fame of a man, it may be known 
absolutely, that he was of value, beyond the capacity 
of the time in which he lived to express. It is the habit 
of the universe, always and every^vhere, to mete out to 
every one exact justice. When, therefore, we see the 
investment a person makes of himself in his own age, 
constantly drawing large instalments of interest in suc- 
ceeding times, we may know that he failed to get all 
that was due him while he lived. The contemporaries 
of Bruno did not appreciate him sufficiently to grant 
him standing room during his natural life. They burnt 
him on the Campo dei Fiori in the city of Rome. But 
in four hundred years, the life capital he left had so in- 
creased in value that his countrymen found the amount 
large enough to build him a monument, which now 



10 

stands in the neighborhood of the spot from which he 
started to heaven in a chariot of flame four centuries 
ago. 

IV. 

Abraham Lincoln has grown more during the 
years that have elapsed since he w^as assassinated than 
any other man of all history ever did in a half century 
after his death. It took four hundred years in the case 
of Bruno to convert his pyre into his monument, but it has 
taken only fifty years in the case of Lincoln to convert 
the bullet of his assassin into many shafts of marble, 
and into as many monuments of affection as there are 
hearts beating in the breasts of civilized human beings. 

V. 

How are we to account for this subtle, intangible, 
growing personal reality, rising round us like an atmos- 
phere, we represent to ourselves by the name of Lincoln? 
It was not his statesmanship. Hamilton was a more 
brilHant master of the structure and functions of govern- 
ment. It was not his oratory. He never reached the 
level of magnetic speech perpetually maintained by 
Webster. It was not simply his gift of boundless common 
sense. In this respect, Benjamin Franklin was his equal. 
It was not his devotion to the cause of abolition simply. 
Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison did more 
to create and direct the moral conviction that gave to 
the slaves their freedom. It was not merely because 
he was the chief executive of the republic during the 
stormiest period of the national history, and managed 
to conduct it through the most terrific civil war ever 
waged. There were others who might have guided 
the ship of state through the storms that imperiled its 



11 



existence. We must look deeper than his words, deeper 
than his deeds, deeper than the official position he held, 
to find the source of Lincoln. 

VI. 

In the words of the text, "All things work together 
for good to them that love God," And in the interpre- 
tation of these words by Carlyle, we find the principle 
by the aid of which we can account for Lincoln, and for 
every other man whose name the passing ages can not 
blot from the memory of our race. Whoever in any 
age discerns and seizes and wholly lives in the divine 
idea history is unfolding insures the publication of him- 
self in larger and larger volumes with every clearer and 
completer expression of that idea. 

VII. 

Plato discerned and seized and wholly lived in the 
divine idea it is the function of philosophy to interpret, 
hence speculative thinkers for twenty-five centuries have 
kept his work fresh in the memory of thoughtful men. 
Copernicus wholly lived in the divine idea expressed in 
the constellations, and henceforth the morning stars 
can' never sing together without magnifying the glory 
of his genius. Darwin, born the same year, the same 
month and the same day with Lincoln, identified him- 
self wholly wdth the divine idea expressed in the method 
of creation, hence all nature, through its flowers and 
through its birds, will never cease to fill the sky with 
perfume and melody in honor of his achievements. 
The divine idea Lincoln wholly lived in was not the intel- 
lectual aspects of it, with which speculative thought 



12 

is concerned ; nor the biological aspects of it with which 
naturalists are concerned; nor the mechanical aspects 
of it, with which astronomers are concerned; but it 
was the distinctly human aspects of it, with which lovers 
and martyrs and heroes are concerned. The universities 
will guard the fortunes of Plato; the observatories will 
keep fresh the memory of Copernicus ; the naturalists will 
take care of the interests of Darwin, but humanity, 
aching, struggling, suffering, despairing, triumphing, wdll 
recount to itself over and over again, until the last page 
of human history is written, the courage, the patience, 
the pity and the sacrifice of Lincoln. The poor belated 
negroes, slaves to petty kings in Africa, slaves to humane 
masters in America, but nevertheless slaves, until 
Lincoln, by a stroke of the pen, knocked the shackles 
from off their limbs, will never cease, in time nor eternity, 
to lift their dark faces in gratitude to him as to their 
savior from bondage. 

VIIL 

Soldiers in blue, and soldiers in gray, more of 
whom now march amid the hills of day than drag 
their w^eary feet over the scenes of conflict, are able to 
see, by the light of a larger, sweeter time, territory suf- 
ficient of the heart of Lincoln for all brave men to stand 
and love, and the armies of Grant and the armies of 
Lee, now, thank God, united on earth and united in 
heaven, will both regard the martyred president as their 
commander-in-chief to all eternity. The sections have 
learned in fifty years that it is better to convert their 
energies into the flying shuttles of commerce to weave 
the people together than it is to turn them into minie 
balls to shoot the people apart. No man's future is 
safer for the time to come than that of Abraham Lincoln. 



13 

He wholly lived in the divine idea at the bottom of the 
American union. He identified himself with the central 
current of our national life. We can not move toward 
the fulfillment of our destiny as a people without per- 
petually witnessing the spirit of Lincoln, accompany- 
ing us, like a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire 
by night. The greater we become as a power among 
the nations, the wider becomes the scope of our com- 
merce, the stronger becomes our influence for unity, 
world-wide and universal, the greater and wider and 
stronger will become Lincoln, who sought in his life to 
harmonize a divided people, and dying left a legacy of 
sympathy and tenderness and sacrifice which, by its 
"mild persistence," has re-united forever in the bonds 
of undying love the members of the national household, 

IX. 

It would not be true to say that Lincoln was 
superior in this or that respect to all other men who 
lived in our country between the years of 1809 and 1865. 
But it is true that he, more than any other, charged 
with the responsibility of national aft'airs, did discern 
and seize and wholly live in the divine idea it seems to 
be the purpose of Providence to realize through these 
United States. It was his complete conformity to the 
central purpose of this nation, as he had light to see it, 
that gives him his unique and growing place in history. 

X. 

The men for whose good the machinery of the 
universe works and whose lives it republishes with every 
revolution of its wheelwork, are not always the strongest 
men in intellectual endowment or administrative ability. 



14 



Nero had, perhaps, had as much or more native abihty 
than Saint Paul, but Nero threw himself across the purpose 
of God, and was ground to powder by it, while Saint Paul 
directed his life parallel with it, and hence lives in larger 
and larger measure with the gradual unfolding of the 
divine purpose. Napoleon was a much greater force 
than Wellington, but Napoleon was left discomfited 
and broken by the roadway of events, while Wellington 
was chosen to move on down the years at the head of 
his invincible columns. Herbert Spencer had intellectual 
ability equal to that of Hegel, but the English thinker 
built his system across the track of advancing thought, 
and had the sorrow of seeing it smashed by the enginry 
of things, before he died, while the German thinker, 
lifting up his system parallel with the universal order, 
and hitched to the purpose at its center, will enjoy the 
happiness of perpetually teaching the human mind. 

XL 

It often happens that the noblest men discern 
and seize and wholly live in an idea, they take to be 
divine, but which, when subjected to the test of time, 
turns out to lead away from the track of history. The 
real test, therefore, of the greatness of one who has 
played a prominent part on the stage of human affairs, 
is this: how completely did he discern and build upon 
an idea moving toward realization in the eternities. A 
great and consecrated man may choose a promising idea, 
and upon it as a foundation, build of gold, or silver, or 
precious stones, or wood, or hay, or stubble, but inevita- 
bly the day of Judgment comes, and then his work is 
made manifest, for the day shall declare it. Every man's 
work is tried, and it is known in every case, finally, of 



15 



what sort it is. If a man's work abide which he hath 
built upon an eternal foundation, he shall receive a 
reward, both for his work and for the wisdom that guided 
him in choosing the right idea upon which to build. 
But if a good man's work shall be burnt because built 
on a wTong idea, he shall suffer the loss of all his effort 
in the performance of that work, but he himself shall be 
saved yet so as by fire. 

Lincoln's work has stood the tests of fifty years of 
judgment days. It has been revealed through fire of 
what sort it was and is. He is now being rewarded both 
for his work and for the insight that led him to build 
on an eternal foundation. Those of us who left the 
union fifty years ago were just as good and great and 
consecrated as were those who remained in it. Our 
works, too, were of gold, and silver, and precious stones, 
but the idea we selected as a foundation upon which to 
build was not moving in the track of events. Our 
Southern Confederacy has been burnt, but the patriot- 
ism, devotion, consecration, which took form in its 
fading and passing fortunes, are forever safe. So great 
are we as a people that it has taken only fifty sad, heart- 
rending years, to bring us to a national level of good 
will, upon which it is in the hearts of all to give to the 
Confederates the same praise for their loyalty to what 
they believe to be right, and to cover their graves with 
flowers as deeply beautiful, as to those who fought on 
the side of victory and in the direction of the idea the 
the God of history is unfolding. 

XII. 

The people of this country, North and South, have 
come to a point of view, high enough above the level 
of fifty years ago, to appreciate the good and great men 



16 



on both sides of the question that separated them once 
into contending armies. Think of a service Hke this 
to-night, held in a city that was burnt to the ground 
forty-five years ago by order of the commander-in-chief 
of the Federal army, whose memory we meet here to 
honor. Nothing like it before ever took place in all 
history. It is a strange and great thing under the sun. 
To what unexpected heights is this movement toward 
fraternity and affection to move? How much higher 
are the waters of good will to rise? If they continue to 
climb they will finally reach the shores upon which New 
York and Boston are situated, so that a memorial serv- 
ice in honor of Jefferson Davis will be held in those 
quarters, where they once hated Mr. Davis as thoroughly 
as we did Mr. Lincoln. Let the waves of fraternity 
swell, until they shall cover every patch of territory and 
island that separated us. 

Theodore Roosevelt, half Georgian and half Dutch- 
man, now the best loved president who has occupied 
his exalted position since Washington, when a young 
man, referred to Jefferson Davis as the arch traitor, 
but recently upon his return from a hunting trip in 
Louisiana, congratulated the people of Mississippi for 
contributing to the country the illustrious name of 
Jefferson Davis, and praised them for the honors they 
had conferred upon that great man, 

Charles Francis Adams, only a short time ago, made 
the frank statement that he was for a long time too 
prejudiced to read the life of Mr, Davis, but, finally, 
being led to do so, he declared that he found his character 
without a blemish. 

The difference between Abraham Lincoln and Jeffer- 
son Davis was not that they were not both good and 



17 



great men, but the difference is that Mr. Lincoln took 
passage on a ship that will sail the seas of time forever, 
while Mr. Davis made the mistake of getting aboard a 
vessel that was wrecked, because out of the course mapped 
by Providence, as the destined way for the people of 
this country to voyage. 

When the confederates left the sinking confederacy 
and walked up the gangway back into the magnificent 
ship upon which all our people began the voyage to the 
future the great captain was cold in death, but had he 
been alive he would have shared his last dollar and his 
last drop of heart's blood with the brave men who had 
been sailing in perilous seas, but who at length were 
coming back to the vessel we will all sail in to the shores 
of eternity. 

XIII. 

In his "Reminiscences of the Civil War," General 
John B. Gordon relates a touchingly beautiful inci- 
dent, illustrative of the sentiment common deep 
down in their souls to the soldiers of both the Union 
and the Confederate armies. The Northern troops 
were on one side of the Rapidan River, and the 
Southern men were on the opposite hills of the other, 
when the stillness of the April twilight was suddenly 
broken by the notes of " Hail Columbia, Happy 
Land." In quick response to this volley of emotion 
from the Northern side of the river, the air was set 
to vibrating by the thrilling strains of "Dixie" from 
the Southern banks of the stream. Then, as if 
untouched by this exchange of sectional salutations, 
one lone volunteer, thinking, doubtless, of loved ones 
at home, lifted his voice into the immortal words of 
" Home, Sweet Home," when, as if moved from 



Heaven, both armies lost sight of all points of the 
national compass, and without reference to who was 
right or who was wrong, without reference to flags 
of truce or terms of surrender, re-established on the 
spot, under the skies of Virginia, the American 
Union, by all getting together in the universal 
cadences, wrung from the lonely spirit of John Howard 
Payne. 

Little did those brave men think, fifty years ago, 
when ceasing to swap lead long enough to do a little 
trading in sentiment, closing their transactions by all 
getting together in "Home, Sweet Home," that they 
were giving voice to prophecy, which those of us who 
meet here to-night have lived to see fulfilled. "Hail 
Columbia, Happy Land," is now domesticated in the 
South, and "Dixie" is tumultuously at home in the 
North. 

Both purified from the flavor of sectionalism through 
the wondrous alembic of love are parts of the songful 
furnishment of every sweet home in the Union! 

The underlying feelings at the bottom of brave 
hearts on the Rapidan have, through deepening ex- 
perience of fifty years, made their way to the top of 
our hearts to-day. We are all back, not merely in 
song but in fact in the "Sweet National Home" of 
our fathers, and from thence, by the grace of God, 
we will never go any more. 



I TBRARV OF CONGRESS 

■I! 

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